Sunday, August 22, 2010

Finally, the Purple, or Mottled, Dragon is a rare, flightless worm with a venomous sting in its tail.

No other details are given for this Purple Dragon. Of course, Volume 2 of OD&D, which contains the illustration accompanying this post, provides the first write-up of this creature, under the name by which it became staple of the game.

These huge and hungry monsters lurk nearly everywhere just beneath the surface of the land. Some reach a length of 50 feet and a girth of nearly 10 feet diameter. There is a poisonous sting at its tail, but its mouth is its most fearsome weapon, for it is so large as to be able to swallow up to ogre-sized opponents in one gulp.

Other than its color, the main element that carried over from Chainmail is the worm's poisonous sting. Interestingly, the AD&D Monster Manual includes an aquatic variant of this creature, called the mottled worm, which recalls its first appearance in Chainmail.

I'm a big fan of re-imagining classic monsters in ways that aren't arbitrary but rather reflective of their complex histories/origins. The purple worm, which I've yet to have any reason to use in my Dwimmermount campaign so far, strikes me as a good candidate for such a re-imagining. While I've avoided detailing any more of the campaign setting than I need for my immediate purposes, I have to admit that I have been giving some thought to the role of dragons, if only because it seems a shame, in a game called Dungeons & Dragons, not to use these creatures at some point. So, the thought has crossed my mind that purple worms (purple wyrms?) are in fact related to dragons, if not actually a subspecies of them. That'd necessitate making them less worm-like and more reptilian in appearance, but that's still in line with OD&D's general description of them, while also being an homage to Chainmail.

22 comments:

I have blogged before of my love of the purple worm...definitely in my Top Ten D&D critters of all time.

I think your re-imagining is a cool one, but would you still have the "swallow whole" bite attack that has also been a staple since at least the OD&D days? I suppose, a more reptilian worm could have a jaw that un-hinges like a snake to grab adventurers and choke them down...; )

“The nethermost caverns are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific. Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head. Wisely did Ibn Schacabao say, that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.”

Perhaps even in their death and decomposition dragons do not die, and their arcane powers feed the worms that eat their corpses. (Or perhaps the bodies of ancient sorcerors and heroes feed them.)

The two things I always found amusing about that picture was the teeth (most un-annelid-like) and the fact that the worm's burrow is so much bigger than the worm.

[Then again in my campaign I accidentally went full circle when I wanted a colour for a wingless dragon whose "native" terrain was underground, and came up with purple as the only choice, if only to enhance the confusion between wyrm and worm for my players. I totally missed the comment in Chainmail. After all, I had a picture (which was worth considerably more than 1,000 words in OD&D).]

I was looking through issues of the comic Kamandi (DC, Kirby, early 70s) the other day and was struck by how the creature ("The Eater") on the cover of issue #18 (June 1974) looked a lot like a purple worm (other than being orange):http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/kamandi

The Acaeum lists the first print of the OD&D set as Jan 1974 ... kind of funny to imagine Kirby being inspired by an early perusal of D&D.

The idea I've been toying with forlinking Purple Worms to dragons is that the Purple Worm is what happens to a dragon with no treasure hoard to sleep on. Something in all that gold preserves the dragon's innate self, and if they don't have one, or the one they have is too small, it's a long but eventual decline into a mindless worm.

I prefer to go in the other direction... Purple Worms are the "original", so to speak, and somewhat more wormy Dragons their evolutionary descendants. i.e., Purple Worms are to Dragons as Gorillas are to Humans (or somesuch).

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